


Three Years Young

by howler32557038



Series: The Simple Life [4]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Birthday Party, Birthday Presents, Kid Fic, M/M, Parenthood, Post Mpreg, Reasons Lincoln is Crying, Series, Short One Shot, Toddler Meltdown, the simple life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 17:30:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15224192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howler32557038/pseuds/howler32557038
Summary: A one-shot based onThe Simple Life.Steve and Bucky's son turns three, and realizes that "turning three" is exactly the same thing as "getting older." He also learns that birthdays are both annual and mandatory. It's a little too much for him to handle.





	Three Years Young

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DarkRose_9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkRose_9/gifts).



> Based on a prompt from DarkRose_9, who kindly referred me to [Reasons My Son is Crying](http://www.reasonsmysoniscrying.com/).

**May 29th, 2020.**

 

Every available Avenger has gathered in the common room - Wanda, Vision, Sharon, Sam, and Tony. Pepper tags along with Tony. Steve and Bucky are forever grateful for their extended family. They’re glad to have enough people in their lives who know about Lincoln and love him to make a birthday party _feel_ like a party.

And this is his first year with _real_ cake. Not just a cupcake to make a mess with, but a perfect, round cake, baked by Pepper and meticulously decorated by Vision.

Steve is thankful to everyone who’s come, of course, but mostly, he’s just happy that Lincoln has been so good. He’s been saying _Please_ and _Thank you,_ he’s been sharing - he was even passably neat about eating, which is more than Steve would have dared to ask for at a third birthday party.

But he’s been going through a phase. Steve doesn’t really know how to classify it, but if pressed, he might say his son is _easily offended._ Bucky, on the other hand, isn’t reveling in Lincoln’s good behavior: he seems a little nervous. He has a sixth sense for oncoming meltdowns, and he’s watching Lincoln, probably noticing that he’s getting a little worn out from all the partying, and just _waiting_ for something to set him off. As usual, Bucky’s apprehension is both timely and well-warranted.

It starts going downhill when Pepper sets Tony’s present on the floor, between Lincoln’s splayed legs, so he can tear it open. He takes the bow off, and the adhesive clings to his hand a little. Tries to shake it off, but it’s stuck good. Bucky, who’s sitting next to him on the floor, sees the frown forming, and gets the bow off his fingers. Sticks it to his shirt, and just like that, he’s all giggles again. Steve stupidly wonders if the crisis has been circumvented early.

Steve and Bucky had jointly requested, as with every gift-giving occasion, that the gifts stay inexpensive and simple. Nothing that takes batteries, nothing that will get stuck in or stain the carpet, nothing that makes unholy noises, and nothing too nice, because Lincoln is still figuring out just how strong he is and he’s getting stronger every day, and he’ll break or take apart just about anything he can get his hands on.

Tony gives him a Lite Brite. Steve and Bucky had never seen one, but Tony had insisted that his had yielded hours of fun for him back in the seventies, and after getting Bucky’s opinion on whether or not Lincoln could be dissuaded from eating the pegs, he’d found an older model. Lincoln seems to understand the concept of the toy from the picture on the box, and apparently it’s so exciting to him that he has to get up and run to Tony.

“Thank--you!” he says, bouncing in front of Tony, who is seated on the couch, punctuating each word with a little hop.

“Oh no, thank _you,”_ Tony replies seriously as Lincoln begins to clamber gracelessly into his lap. Tony gives him a little help up. “You know I’m gonna sneak into your room and play with it, right? Like, no false pretenses here, Lincoln, that’s why I bought it.”

“Um - you can maybe come over,” Lincoln agrees, looking back toward Steve for permission. Steve smiles and gives him a nod. “And we can play with - and you can show _me_ how to play it, and then I can also show _you_ how to do some Play Doh.”

Tony gasps dramatically. “You know how to do Play Doh? Where did you study? What’s your Alma Mater? How much do private lessons cost?”

“No, I will just show you, Tony. It, um, it’s _very_ easy, because it’s a little soft when you put some water on it.”

“Little water on the Play Doh? That’s your secret?”

Steve has to admit, Tony does a pretty impressive job of understanding what the hell Lincoln is saying. His kid knows a lot of words and he can make some pretty complex sentences now, but actually _knowing_ what he’s saying is still an uphill battle most of the time. Great vocabulary, sharp as a tack, but sounds damn near blackout drunk. _Of course Tony understands him. Tony_ speaks _that language. Fluently._

“Yes, because sometimes you, um, you leave the lid, and it is not on all the way down on it, on the top,” he explains painstakingly, miming putting a lid on a jar. Steve laughs quietly as he watches him. “And then, when you didn’t get it, because the lid is off, air is gonna get _inside,”_ he reveals, opening his hands to indicate he’s made his point. “Then you gotta, you have to put some water.”

Tony chuckles, apparently a little taken by Lincoln’s detailed instructions on how to soften dried-out Play Doh, and pulls him closer to give him a one-armed hug and a shake. “Ugh, you’re so smart, kiddo. Hard to believe you’re not adopted.”

“Yeah, because I am _three_ now,” Lincoln tells him, raising two fingers, and then adding a third a moment later.

“Three years old, oh my _God,”_ Tony exclaims, letting his head fall back against the back of the sofa, to show that he’s quite literally blown away. “You’re killing me, kid. Feels like you were _just_ born - now look at you. You’re an old man.”

“No, well, I _am_ still little.”

“Are you sure? You look suspiciously like a big boy now,” Tony points out.

Steve notices a muscle in Bucky’s jaw tensing as he edges a little closer. There’s the tell. Steve hasn’t detected it yet, but Bucky already feels it coming.

“What, you don’t want to be a big boy?” Tony laughs. “You don’t want to be an old man, like your Dad?”

“I am _not_ an old man or big.”

Oh. There it is. _Now_ Steve sees it. Eyebrows are knitted, bottom lip is pouting, and he’s fidgeting.

Pepper does what Pepper does best, and tries to get Tony out of the mess Tony doesn’t yet realize he’s in. “Oh, sweetheart, Tony knows you’re still little. He doesn’t think you’re an old man.”

But there’s the phrase again, and it’s all Lincoln’s selective hearing seems to pick up. He pushes himself out of Tony’s embrace and sits up, frown deepening, face flushing red with heartbreak and indignation. “I am _not_ an old man,” he whines shrilly, elongating the last word, looking back toward Bucky as his speech disintegrates into crying.

But Bucky has had a few minutes to prepare himself for this inevitability, and he stands up and puts out his hands prophetically, just as Lincoln tips himself bonelessly out of Tony’s lap toward the floor, jamming his fingers into his eyes as he sobs.

“Oh no, Lincoln,” Tony groans. “I didn’t mean it, kid. I’m sorry, you’re not an old man. You’re still a little boy. You’re an infant. An unborn fetus. Whatever you want.”

Lincoln yells something that Steve can’t quite make out - the words are too slurred and wet.

“Baby, what’s the matter?” he prompts him. If he and Bucky were in the middle of anything but Lincoln’s birthday party, they might tell him to clean up his act, but everyone in attendance seems both sympathetic and amused, at this point, so he tries to coax the whole story out of him.

“I don’t _wanna_ get _old!”_ he shouts a little more emphatically, crying harder as Bucky pats him indelicately, staring Steve down with tired acceptance in his eyes.

“Lincoln, Tony was just being facetious,” Bucky says sternly, tone demanding that his son at least try to see reason.

But Lincoln only wails louder. “I don’t _know_ what that even _is!”_

“Do you want to know?” Bucky offers calmly.

“No!”

“Lincoln, Tony was just kidding. And he said he was sorry,” Steve interjects.

“I _know!_ And I’m _not mad.”_

“Well, what’s wrong then?”

“I don’t wanna be old!”

Suddenly, Bucky seems to realize what’s going on. Steve can practically see a lightbulb over his head. “Oh,” he sighs. “Are you a little sad that you’re not two anymore?”

“I cannot be three yet, I can’t,” he gasps. “I can’t _handle_ it and I didn’t even know a birthday was going to happen and now you made me,” and another shakey gasp, and a little cough, “you guys made me be older and I wasn’t even ready…” The pitch of his voice rises frantically at the end of his sentence, and his wails become pitiful, crumpled weeping.

“Birthdays just happen, Lincoln,” Steve shrugs. “They happen every year.”

Oh, that was the _wrong_ thing to say. “I don’t need any more of them! I don’t need them! I don’t want to be old and too big.” _Too big_ is so gut-wrenching for him to get out, Steve thinks it has five syllables and four _H-_ es

“Sorry, guys,” Bucky sighs.

Sam raises his plastic cup somberly. “No big deal, man, he’s preaching to the choir.”

Pepper laughs abruptly. Now that she takes a moment to consider it, she seems to agree, too. “Yeah, get this guy a Ted Talk.”

“Lincoln, do you want to go lie down for a few minutes?” Bucky asks. Steve knows that voice, and Lincoln probably does, too. He’s offering just to be polite, but Lincoln is _going_ to lie down.

“Huh-uh!”

“Right, because you definitely don’t need a nap.”

“I don’t!”

“Then I guess you’re a big boy who doesn’t take naps anymore.”

“I’m not _big,_ Papa, I’m not! No.”

“Alright, then we gotta take a nap, so you can be little.”

“I need to do that,” he sobs, burying his wet face against Bucky’s neck. Bucky takes it admirably in stride.

“We’ll open the other presents when I get him cleaned up, guys, sorry,” he says quietly. “He just...I don’t know. Guess he just realized that the passage of time is unstoppable. Faced down his own mortality. Give us twenty minutes, he’ll be alright,” he says blandly.

Steve sits down next to Tony as his son's sobs fade out down the hallway, and heaves a deep, happy, exhausted sigh. “This is a lot different than I thought it was going to be,” he snorts. “I thought we’d cry over stuff like vegetables and sharing. No. It’s _this.”_

“I don’t know,” Tony shrugs, speaking breezily over the rim of his cup. “That’s about how you were when S.H.I.E.L.D. dug you up.”

Steve smiles tightly, nodding. “Thank you, Tony. Thanks for that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written tonight, rather spur of the moment, because of a comment from DarkRose_9 on [Something Good Can Work](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14630541). Hope you like it, friend! <3!


End file.
